The Great Escape

This is the image that started it all!

For 35 years, I have made a living in fine art, painting in both the still life and abstract genres. But it took the intervention of one of my granddaughters, then two years old, for me to fully combine the two styles and add humour to boot.

You see, one day in 2010, I went into my studio and found that my precisely constructed still life setup had been augmented by a plastic dump truck and driver, carefully placed “just-so” in the middle of the scene. The unintended art critique made my wife, Sharon, and I laugh out loud!

As I looked at the combination of the traditional still life and the plastic toy, the humor and sheer nuttiness of it opened up a new floodgate of creativity. I spent the next week mixing traditional still life subjects with plastic toys until I created The Great Escape – a caper scene wherein a brave dump truck driver engineers a Rube Goldberge-esque process to rescue his toolbox-imprisoned friends.

Painting The Great Escape was as much fun setting it up and I felt liberated to do whatever I needed to to make the canvas come alive. The background is bold, dramatic, and highly abstract and provides a perfect counterpoint to the zany realism of the foreground scene.

I also employed abstract art techniques in the texture of the bucket, the weathered paint of the wooden truck, and in the scuffed metal of the toolbox.

Other details

I must admit, I didn’t think The Great Escape would sell; I assumed it was too frivolous for a “serious” collector. Wrong! The painting sold before the varnish was even dry. Who says fine art can’t also be fun? Not me!

All Richard Hall prints are limited edition and hand-signed and numbered by the artist.

All of our prints are finished with a coating that protects the print and enhances light-fastness; we use the highest quality pigmented inks with an estimated lifetime of 118 years.

Canvas giclées: Edition of 50 (for all sizes), signed and numbered on the back of the piece. Archivally mounted or stretched and hand-coated with protectant. Framed canvas giclées are hand-framed in our studio with an espresso-colored frame with gold-tone lip. Unframed canvas giclées should not be framed with glass.

Paper giclées: Edition of 250 for 12” x 16” sizes; edition of 125 for 18” x 24”. Printed on high-quality, acid-free paper and comes with a hand-cut mat that fits into a standard-size frame. We recommend that you use a frame with glass to ensure longevity of your paper print.

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About

For 35 years, Richard Hall enjoyed a successful career in fine art, using his talents to explore the opposing worlds of abstract art and traditional still life. But chance intervened when a mischievous toddler added her two-cents worth to one of Richard’s still life settings, prompting Richard to see his work in an entirely new way. READ MORE

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